Tag: J.W. Gibson

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Politics Politics Feature

Gibson Opens Up

Mayoral candidate J.W. Gibson with wife Kathy at headquarters opening (Photo: Jackson Baker)

In opening his headquarters on Quince Road in East Memphis last Saturday, J.W. Gibson — who is variously described as a businessman, as a developer, and as a philanthropist — sought to remedy one of the problems of his mayoral campaign.

The problem has been that, in a field overflowing with candidates of one stripe or another — a lawman, a local government veteran, a former mayor, a school board member, et al. — Gibson has lacked the focus that a single easy-to-digest descriptor might provide to distinguish him from his competitors.

He attempted to deal with that issue last Saturday by presenting a “six-point” plan and characterizing himself as a man of multiple dimensions, experienced in meeting a wide array of challenges.

“I’m a native Memphian, born in Dixie Homes, raised in South Memphis. I’m a Navy veteran, owner of three businesses, a wholesale distributorship, real estate development, and commercial printing.”

He proudly owned up to being the printer of the state’s lottery coupons. “Did y’all know that they were all printed here in Memphis?”

He identified himself with Memphis yet further by the very distinctive nature of his experiences — including, he pointedly noted, a successful, long-term “interracial marriage.” On hand last Saturday and prominently introduced were his wife Kathy and their two daughters, Savannah and Alicia.

Kathy Gibson is the president of Buckman Laboratories, one of the true ornaments of local industry. Buckman is a global specialty chemical company that conducts business in over 90 countries and employs approximately 1,700 associates.

Both the senior Gibsons are well known for the range of their contributions to numerous local arts programs and other causes.

Gibson’s six-point platform was unabashedly multiplicitous, as well. Among the points of it was the crime issue, the resolution of which depended on the coordinated activity of the entire community, he said, promising to invest in new crime-control technology and to hold a massive “crime summit” if elected.

Other platform points were economic and workforce development. Gibson lamented that the city had — some eight years ago, he said — divested itself of a workforce development program as such. (Others maintain that the city’s program was shifted over to the county under state mandate.)

Still another platform point was early childhood and youth development, apropos which Gibson proposed the restoration of direct city aid to Shelby County Schools — though not in the same measure as existed prior to the 2013 merger of city and county systems, followed by the creation of suburban municipal systems.

Gibson pledged to “bring back home” MLGW, which he called a “city division” but has enjoyed a partial autonomy of action. And he promised to create an annual showcase of Memphis music talent.

Last Saturday’s self-introduction was in the wake of a flurry of new yard signs advocating Gibson’s candidacy, and it will be followed up this week by ads on local TV.

Also hitting the tube this week was Sheriff Floyd Bonner with a 30-second biographical ad on all local stations pointing out that Bonner was the first African American to head the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department.

New TV ads were also purportedly imminent from candidates Paul Young and Van Turner, the latter of whom previewed one this week in online form.

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Politics Politics Feature

Who Gets the GOP Vote?

Floyd Bonner, here receiving Sheriff of the Year award last week from Tennessee Sheriffs’ Association, is one of several mayoral candidates hopeful of getting GOP votes in October. (Photo: Courtesy Floyd Bonner)

UPDATED: As is generally known, Memphis city elections are not subject to partisan voting. There are no primaries allowing our local Republicans and Democrats to nominate a candidate to carry the party banner.

Nor, in the case of citywide office (mayor or council super districts 8 and 9), does there exist machinery for a runoff election when no candidate for those offices commands a majority of the general election vote.

There are runoff circumstances for districts 1 through 7, each of them a single district contributing to the pastiche of city government, by electing, in effect, a council member to serve a smaller geographical area or neighborhood.

The aforementioned super districts encompass the entire city. Each of them, in theory, represents a half of the city’s population — the western half being predominantly Black, as of 1991, when the first super-district lines were drawn, the eastern half being largely white. (Though population has meanwhile shifted, those distinctions are still more or less accurate.)

Runoffs are prohibited in the super districts as well as in mayoral elections in the city at large because, in the Solomonic judgment of the late U.S. District Judge Jerome Turner, who devised this electoral system in response to citizen litigation, that’s how things should be divided in order to recognize demographic realities while at the same time discouraging efforts to exploit them.

Each citizen of Memphis gets to vote for four council members, one representing the single district of their residence, the other three representing the half of the city in which their race is predominant. Runoffs are permitted in the smaller single districts, where racial factors do not loom either divisive or decisive, while they are prohibited in the larger areas, where, in theory, voters of one race could rather easily league together to elect one of their own (as whites commonly did in the historic past).

Mayoral elections are winner-takes-all, and Willie Herenton’s victory in 1991 as the first elected Black mayor is regarded as having been a vindication of the system.

Got all that?

Yes, it’s a hodgepodge, but it’s what we’ve still got, even though Blacks, a minority then, are a majority now. And, in fact, race is irrelevant in the 2023 mayor’s race, there being no white candidate still participating with even a ghost of a chance of winning.

Political party is the major remaining “it” factor, and the failure of either party to call for primary voting in city elections has more or less nullified it as a direct determinant of the outcome.

But, with the withdrawal last week from the mayoral race of white Republican candidates Frank Colvett and George Flinn, speculation has become rampant as to who, among the nominal Democrats still in the race, might inherit the vote of the city’s Republicans.

Sheriff Floyd Bonner, whose law-and-order posture is expected to appeal to the city’s conservatives?

Downtown Memphis Commission CEO Paul Young, who has several prior Republican primary votes on his record in non-city elections?

Businessman J.W. Gibson, who once was a member of the local Republican steering committee?

Only NAACP president Van Turner and former Mayor Herenton, among serious candidates, are exempt from such speculation, both regarded as being dyed-in-the-wool Democrats.

In a close election, the disposition of the Republican vote, estimated to be 24 percent of the total, could be crucial.

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Politics Politics Feature

POLITICS: Decisions, Decisions …

Mayoral candidate J.W. Gibson at last weekend’s Sidney Chism picnic (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Businessman J.W. Gibson is reportedly getting ready to retool his mayoral campaign with help from veteran political consultant Susan Adler Thorp. Polls indicate that Gibson’s campaign has never really gotten off the ground. Nor has his initial slogan suggesting that Memphis needs a “new tune.”

And the professional respect Gibson enjoys as a result of his long-term philanthropic and developmental activities has not been general enough to have earned him much name recognition with the public. Despite a distinguished and vaguely mayoral appearance, he has also struggled to stand out at the many collective forums and meet-and-greets he has been a presence at.

With just under four months left before election day, Gibson, who has abundant private resources, could still make an impact, but only if he finds a viable message and can popularize it. Almost uniquely in the crowded mayoral field, he has expressed openness to the idea of a possible property tax increase.

• Among observers who are closely following the mayoral race, there is a difference of opinion as to whether there are three main contenders so far — Sheriff Floyd Bonner, Downtown Memphis Commission CEO Paul Young, and NAACP president and former County Commissioner Van Turner — or four —those three, plus former longtime Mayor Willie Herenton.

Everyone acknowledges that Herenton, who has led at least one unofficial poll, has a dependable voting bloc, based on his long mayoral tenure and, especially, his precedent-establishing 1991 victory as the city’s first elected Black chief executive. Some wonder if his budget, expected to be minimal, will allow for a serious stretch run.

Bonner and Young won’t have such worries. Both have cash-on-hand holdings in the vicinity of half a million dollars. And Turner, whose purse at this point is roughly a third of that amount, has a long-established base of dependable supporters.

• As has long been expected, former City Councilman Berlin Boyd has pulled a petition to run for the open Super District 8, Position 3, seat held for the past two terms by Council Chairman Martavius Jones, who is term-limited.

Boyd’s name had also turned up on the petition list for Super District 8, Position 1 — something the once and possibly future councilman attributes to an error by one of his staff members. Boyd says he never had any intention of running against the 8-1 incumbent, JB Smiley, a friend, and he has done the paperwork to nullify that prospect. (He also denies a previously published report that he might take another crack at District 7, currently occupied by Michalyn Easter-Thomas, who in 2019 ousted then-incumbent Boyd in a runoff.)

Boyd has, however, considered the “back-up” idea of running for Super District 8, Position 2, a seat being eyed by several others, who take seriously a rumor that incumbent Cheyenne Johnson will not end up being a candidate for re-election. But, he says, “I’m 99 percent sure I’ll be running for Position 3.” Eight other people have so far pulled petitions for Position 3.

• The aforementioned Smiley is one of four current holders of super district seats who, as of early this week, did not yet have declared opposition. The other fortunate ones were Chase Carlisle in Super District 9, Position 1, Ford Canale in 9-2, and Jeff Warren in 9-3.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

2023 Sidney Chism Picnic

Host Sidney Chism, here with Police Director C.J. Davis, presided at his annual political picnic on Saturday. (Photos: Jackson Baker)

Saturday saw the latest installation of longtime political figure Sidney Chism’s annual picnic, a fixture on the election landscape for a generation. The event, held at park grounds off Horn Lake Road, draws candidates, observers, political junkies, and kids of all ages. It’s a can’t-miss.

Here are some of the scenes from this year’s picnic, captured before the rains came in early afternoon. Several late arrivals, including a majority of the candidates running for mayor, came, were seen, and hoped to conquer, but are not pictured.

Host Sidney Chism greets District 3 Council candidate Yolanda Cooper-Sutton from his cart.
Mayoral candidate J.W. Gibson at Chism picnic
Mayoral candidate Paul Young greets employees of register’s office at Chism picnic.
District 3 Council candidate Pearl Walker at Chism picnic
District 3 Council candidate Towanna Murphy at Chism picnic
District 3 Council candidate James Kirkwood at Chism picnic
DA Steve Mulroy schmoozing at Chism picnic
Kevin Carter and David Upton at Chism picnic
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Politics Politics Feature

Of Shows and No-Shows

Monday night’s venue (Photo: Halloran Centre | Facebook)

By now, the much-ballyhooed first of two mayoral forums to be conducted by the Daily Memphian has come and gone. The five billed participants at Monday night’s event at the Halloran Centre were Paul Young, Michelle McKissack, J.W. Gibson, Frank Colvett, and Karen Camper.

The fact is, only one of these participants can be ranked among the leaders at this early pre-petition stage of the mayoral race. That would be Downtown Memphis Commission CEO Young, who is indisputably the most successful fundraiser among all the candidates.

Young reported $432,434.97 on hand in his second-quarter financial disclosure, just outdoing Sheriff Floyd Bonner, who reported $400,139.12. Young is also known to have significant support among the city’s business and civic social elite, who make up a large percentage of the donor class.

At this juncture, the main disadvantage facing Young vis-à-vis rival Bonner is a fairly enormous name-recognition gap favoring the sheriff, who has out-polled every other contestant for whatever position in each of the last two Shelby County elections.

Clearly, the need to narrow this gap is one reason, along with his undoubted public-spiritedness, that impels Young to take part, along with other relatively unknown candidates, in every public forum that comes along.

Keeping their distance from such events so far are Bonner and Willie Herenton, the even better-known former longtime mayor. Almost as hesitant to appear at such affairs has been local NAACP president and former County Commissioner Van Turner, who, like the other two, was absent Monday night, as he had been at a recent mayoral forum at First Congregational Church.

Turner, also, can claim a respectable degree of prior name recognition, and he brought into the mayoral race a fairly well-honed constituency among the city’s center to center-left voters.

The relevance of all this to this week’s forum, and to other such opportunities for exposure that may come along before petitions can be drawn on May 22nd, should be obvious. Those who need to enhance their share of public attention are likely to be attendees; those who feel more secure in their familiarity to the electorate may not be.

To be sure, both Bonner and Turner pleaded the fact of previously scheduled fundraising events as reasons for their absence on Monday night. A reliable rule of thumb in politics is that the existence of “prior commitments” can always be adduced to explain nonparticipation in a particular event.

Still, to win, it is necessary to be an active competitor, and Bonner, Herenton, and Turner, who — not coincidentally — topped the results in the only poll that has been made public so far, can be expected to rev things up in fairly short order. Bonner and Turner have been stalled somewhat by their ongoing litigation against a five-year residency requirement posited by the Election Commission.

That matter may be effectively resolved in Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins’ court at a scheduled May 1st hearing.

Herenton, meanwhile, has habitually stonewalled multi-candidate appearances throughout his long public career — out of apparent pride as much as anything else.

None of the foregoing is meant to suggest that other candidates, including the five involved Monday night, can’t break out of the pack. Politics is notoriously unpredictable.

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Politics Politics Feature

Going the Distance

James Harvey in Germantown (Photo: Jackson Baker)

As noted in this space last week, the current Memphis city election year is seemingly destined to become the most long-distance such event in the city’s history, with several mayoral candidates already declared and notably running months in advance of any actual voting.

To stress the point: No ballots will be cast until September 15th, when early voting begins for the election, which concludes for most purposes on October 5th. Should there be district council races in which there is no majority winner, runoffs will be held for those districts on November 16th.

Contestants for mayor and for city council positions will not even be able to pick up their qualifying petitions from the Election Commission until May 22nd, almost three months from now. And district lines for the 13 council positions are still under review.

All these facts indicate just how far off in time the election really is; though in key races, for city council as well as for mayor, there is a distinct flurry of activity as would-be candidates try to get their campaigns (and their fundraising needs) established and in order.

• Apropos long-distance campaigning, Monday night of this week saw a different application of the term. Memphis mayoral candidate James Harvey, speaking not in Memphis but before an audience in Germantown, held forth for an hour and a half. That’s the length of speaking time that occurs usually only for events like a presidential State of the Union address or an arena speech by Donald Trump to one of his devoted, cult-like audiences.

Harvey, a longtime FedEx administrator who now is proprietor of his own staffing service, is a former member of the Shelby County Commission and served a term as that body’s chairman. An African American, he was a Democrat in those days, but his party affiliation has become somewhat ambiguous. He has involved himself in several Republican races as a sponsor of other people’s events, but on Monday night he downplayed the issue of partisanship (appropriately enough for the Memphis city election, which is formally nonpartisan).

Monday night’s event, at the Perkins Restaurant & Bakery in Germantown, was sponsored by the Shelby County Republican Party’s outreach committee, and chaired by the indefatigable Naser Fazlullah, who advised attendees that Harvey had “the gift of gab.”

That’s one way of putting it. Another was voiced years ago by then County Commissioner Chris Thomas, who commented after one of colleague Harvey’s extended monologues, “I could have gone out and gotten a haircut during all of that.”

James Harvey does indeed love to talk, and, though several members of his audience Monday night had to leave before he finished, the body as a whole seemed to resonate with his remarks, which focused on public safety and crime and the value of strong authority. He declared himself in favor of age 15 as the outer limit for Juvenile Court supervision and fulminated against tinted car windows and the antisocial actions of wayward youths, whom he characterized by the terms “Li’l Billy and Li’l Pookie.” He also at one point singled out “Jay [sic] Morant,” the Grizzlies superstar who has recently been involved in a series of questionable incidents.

As a candidate, Harvey is something of an anomaly and would be well advised to limit his speaking time but, in the best of circumstances, could find appreciative audiences like the one Monday night.

• Businessman J.W. Gibson, who is able to self-fund if need be, formally announced his candidacy for Mayor at an event Monday at the Stax Museum, calling for a “different tune” in city government.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Young, Bonner Lead Mayoral Candidates in Cash on Hand

Photo by cottonbro studio / Pixels.

The first financial disclosures from the 2023 candidates for Memphis Mayor are now available.

As of January 15, the two leaders in the vital “Cash on Hand” category are Downtown Memphis president/CEO Paul Young, with a reported $312,699.12, followed closely by Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner, with $310,482.88:

Businessman J.W. Gibson reports the $300,000 he has loaned to himself as a campaign starter. NAACP president and former County Commissioner Van Turner reports cash on hand in the amount of $121,747.29.

State House Democratic Leader Karen Camper reports $33,862. (She has the disadvantage of not being able to raise money during the ongoing legislative session).

School Board chair Michelle McKissick has so far not filed a disclosure statement.

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Politics Politics Feature

The Watchdog

Tom Jones (Photo: Courtesy Tom Jones)

The name “Tom Jones” is well known to students of literature (as that of a picaresque hero in a pathfinding 18th-century novel by Henry Fielding) and to popular music fans (as that of a formidably talented 20th century cabaret singer). It is also familiar locally to followers of politics and journalism.

This latter Tom Jones is an author, a veteran of local government, and a highly respected watchdog of media and politics in Shelby County and, for that matter, in Tennessee at large. Jones is the proprietor of “All News is Local,” a well-read Facebook page that keeps tabs (and score) on the aforementioned subjects.

In an age in which journalism is demonstrably diminishing, quantity-wise, Jones makes it his business to evaluate such quality as remains. He posts daily reminders — and sometimes whole essays — regarding which subjects and which writers are worth attending to.

Jones’ range is impressive, but, by and large, he is looking for, and recommending, cases of serious and detailed journalism about important subjects — as well as noting examples that fall short of the mark.

To be honest, he hasn’t had a whole lot to say about me personally of late. His last reference was, in fact, to a boo-boo of mine earlier this year when I carelessly quoted some lines of a playground jingle that, in one erstwhile version, has an overtly racist line. My quote was based on a sanitized version that involved “catch[ing] a tiger by the toe.” But still, shame on me.

My daughter Julia Baker, who toils for the Daily Memphian and whose coverage of criminal justice matters often gets noted by Jones, reminded me of a Jones post, not too long ago, that referred to me as an “encyclopedia.” That’s good, I guess. What I best remember is a “To Whom It May Concern” letter he issued in 1991, during the first full year of this column, in which Tom cited my coverage of the then ongoing mayoral election of that year as exemplary.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that’s kept me going these 30-odd years since. That letter was long since framed and attached to my home office wall.

Tom has worked in harness with such other local lights as Carol Coletta (with Smart City) and Susan Thorp. In his government years he served as a right arm for three consecutive Shelby County mayors — Bill Morris, Jim Rout, and AC Wharton.

Check out “All News is Local.” You won’t regret it.

• Van Turner, the former Shelby County commissioner and local NAACP head who is one of several declared candidates in the 2023 Memphis mayor’s race, has several declared supporters among other well-known political figures, but one of them, the recently elected District Attorney Steve Mulroy, has become something of a doppelganger, appearing as a co-occupant of automobiles bearing his name along with Turner’s in formal parades in Orange Mound and Whitehaven.

“I don’t know if I have bootstraps, but I want it known that I do support Van wholeheartedly, and to the extent that it helps him, so much the better,” avers the reform-minded Mulroy, who may be getting some useful long-term community support himself from onlookers, who greet him, he says, with shouts of “Hey, Mr. DA!”

• The Flyer has not been able to confirm an interest in running for mayor on the part of J.W. Gibson, but the well-known businessman and former county commissioner is known to have discussed the race with friends and confidantes.

There is a general feeling among pol-watchers that the field of candidates, which so far includes Turner, Sheriff Floyd Bonner, Downtown Memphis Commission President/CEO Paul Young, school board chair Michelle McKissack, state House minority leader Karen Camper, and former TV Judge Joe Brown, isn’t done yet.